Extending our classroom to the world!

Author: monica598fall15

As I was submitting the last of the assignments for this Project Management class, I realized with a start that I never submitted my second blog post. Without further ado, I decided to write about what I thought was the most valuable takeaway for me from this course: risk management. With the entirety of the course in perspective, risk seemed to be the most important aspect of planning on our group project. We had to manage conflicts with each other’s schedules, externalities in terms of events that might affect our cause, such as negative Facebook comments, and a highly unfortunate incident of a volcano eruption in Indonesia, which no one could have predicted or prevented, that ended up affecting presentation timelines.

I found the below interesting article on CIO.com that described the importance of risk management in project management and how they truly go hand in hand. The possibility of obstacles arising affects everything, from the budget, to timelines, to implementation and scope. As I’ve overseen my team at work in implementing a high profile campaign for my client, I’ve found myself proactively planning any and all obstacles that may arise. Much to my disappointment, one of the situations we had planned for did end up cascading down the wire last week. Due to having a risk plan in place, we were able to get a hold of it within a few hours and keep our client from having a complete meltdown. As we move on from this obstacle, we still have to keep in mind that there are always more risk factors involved that could pop up at any minute. All projects come with a variety of risk factors, but there is no need to worry about the jeopardization of a project due to risk if you have the right plan in place from the start.

Since enrolling in this class, I’ve struggled with the question of whether or not my current job as a Media manager is actually that of an advertising project manager. Upon doing some reading and evaluating the roles of my direct supervisor, I have determined that I am not in a straight project management role, but rather that of a hybrid project manager and producer/planner. Within the advertising industry, the role of project manager takes on a very different meaning and is not as effective a position as it may be in other corporate environments.

Recently, I read a very interesting article on AdWeek about agencies and the struggle between hiring project managers vs. producers.Within advertising, project management is too high level of a role to build success in a solid advertising plan. It is absolutely imperative that ad managers are directly involved with their teams, as media plan require an incredible amount of attention to detail and multiple double and triple checks among team members before something goes to the client. Because of this, taking an overhead management approach is incredibly ineffective. The article states:

“Project managers manage action items and resources. They see themselves as the owners of the master plan and project documentation. They serve as team coordinators, checking to-dos off a list. Project managers consider “on time” and “on budget” as their ultimate success metrics.

In contrast, producers love the creative work just as much as the creative team. Producers consider themselves members of the creative team and the center that helps empower the rest of the team to do brilliant work. They are heavily invested in the project and are equally proud to see the campaign go live. Producers measure their own success by the quality of the end deliverable.”

While I admit this is a biased view against project management, I have to play devil’s advocate and agree with it for the purposes of my industry alone. The closest position to “project manager” on my current team is that of the associate directors, one level above mine. The ADs, as we call them, are in charge of overseeing the entire media team at a very high level. They keep track of overall budgets once a month or so and make sure presentations are getting out and plans being implemented by talking to me and the other managers. My direct supervisor specifically makes sure to keep as out of the weeds as possible, to amplify his top-level role. This has caused a slew of challenges across our team many times. Within our industry, it’s incredibly important to be involved in the details so everything is covered if someone happens to be out sick or leaves the company. With high turnover in the industry, this preparation cannot be stressed enough.

Recently, we experienced an extreme project management failure on our team due to lack of involvement on the details. Two team members who worked together left the company within a week of each other and left their specific accounts in disarray. Because my associate director has gotten used to staying very high level and trusting everything to the assigned manager, he was not aware of what went into managing their media plans and the transition to covering for the two team members was a rough one that reflected badly on our team to the clients. In the two months that it took to recover their accounts, we all realized how important it is to keep track of all the small details with all of our plans. Since then, all of the managers and associate directors have worked together to keep track of everything going on at all level to ensure this doesn’t happen again.

Overall, I believe the role of project manager is incredibly important, but in the ad world, the role has evolved to something a bit more involved than the high-level role used in the corporate world.